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Saturday, December 31, 2016

Five years back on this day I wrote my first ever blogpost.
So, despite the fact that I haven’t written much after I returned to India from
my Euro Trip, I decided to celebrate the 5th anniversary of my blog
with another blogpost. And although it’s been a month that I am back here,
memories of Europe remain vividly etched on the canvas of my mind and I fail to
not reminisce them every single day, every single night.

Some of the questions I faced when I returned (and I still
face sometimes) were about how much I spent on the trip, more so because I was
the one who had managed to spoil three cellphones and one laptop during the
trip. But besides these major damages there were minute disappearances that
kept on happening with my trivial belongings. Surprisingly, I felt happier when
I lost my clothing items since it implied that I had to carry less in my baggage
during the rest of the trip.

Here’s a list of items I lost during the Euro Trip and the
places where I lost them because sometimes such are the marks we, humans leave.

1.Jewelry Box in Aarhus, Denmark – The first loss,
of course, needs to happen in the first country I landed in. And somewhere
amidst all the packing and unpacking I did to make my rucksack sufficient to
sustain me for the next two months of hopping from one country to another, I
lost that little box containing the best pairs of earrings I owned and had
initially packed to wear at various places.

2.Miscellaneous in Mykonos, Greece – The next loss
happened by the time I had realized that I packed too many clothes and shoes, and if I needed to take my travel seriously I
needed to let go of the desire to wear “that perfect attire” for “that perfect occasion”
all the time. It was before heading to the beach that I washed a few clothes
and hung them outside the camp where we were staying for the night. In the
evening when I returned from the beach party, I found my essentials still
hanging on the thin wire but two t-shirts, one pair of shorts, another pair of
trousers were all gone. I was disappointed that the last pair of item was new
and I wore it only once, but for the rest of the items – I was glad.

3.Towel in Venice, Italy – Remember how the thief
of Mykonos had left my essentials and stolen only the clothes? In the camp in
Venice, just the opposite happened – I had washed and hung only my towel and
around 7 pairs of essentials and returned in the evening to find nothing. Albeit
funny and unexpected, the incident was, my next worry was that I had to urgently
pay a visit to the Supermarket. :-P

4.Jacket in Vienna, Austria – The fourth loss was
heart-breaking. I loved the jacket I recently had bought. I vividly remember
throwing my jacket on the bed before tucking my blanket and going to sleep. The
next morning I searched everywhere in the hostel but I couldn’t find my beloved
brown jacket.

5.Warmer in Zagreb, Croatia – I had, in Aarhus, packed
my rucksack for only two months’ travel and the travel didn’t include places
covered with snow. (I was supposed to get back to my luggage after two months
and get warmer clothes to stand the snow). But it was when I was in Marseilles,
France that I decided to visit Switzerland for which I needed warmer clothes,
having lost one jacket already. So I bought a body-warmer from that place, wore
it in Switzerland and then when I went to the place where I didn’t need it - Zagreb,
my first stop in Croatia, I forgot to pack it in while checking out. When I was
walking to catch the bus from Zagreb that was booked previously, I recalled the
black body-warmer lying unowned on my bed in the hostel but there was no time
or reason to go for it.

6.Scarf in Maribor, Slovenia – It was a cold rainy
night. I had my raincoat on along with a cap to cover my head and a scarf for
the neck. I was walking from the train station to the students’ hostel where I
was staying. Minutes later, I realized that the scarf was no longer wrapped
around my neck. I imagined it lying somewhere on the pavement, getting drenched
in the rain deeming it unviable to be picked up and worn again. I ditched the
thought and walked forward without looking back.

7.Shorts in Barcelona, Spain - I eventually had
concluded that I had stopped losing stuffs. My bag wasn’t very heavy anymore. I
had thrown three pairs of shoes in Berlin, Germany to reduce the weight. My
laptop had broken already. The selfie-stick, which didn’t serve any purpose had
broken already. There were hardly more stuffs to carry so there wasn’t any. But
when we were about to hit the sea in Alicante and I was supposed to find my
pair of shorts in my bag which I had worn the previous night in Barcelona, I
realized it was no longer where it was supposed to be. It was probably the last
thing I forgot to pack.

Because post this, every stuff that I did
not bring home were things that were supposed to go.

Goodreads

I cannot, or rather will not judge a book that touches the strings of my heart and leaves me half-crying and half-contemplating about my own meaningless existence in this vast universe.

The kind of story that makes you want to question the laws of nature, that's heart-ending and beautiful and that makes you irrevocably fall in love with the story and the characters. And you all you want to do is pray for the characters who are left behind to leave a life of mourning and misery and that's when you realize it's just a work of fiction. But not really, because fictions are realities we don't think of, that are happening to people we know nothing about.